Oprah as Sofia in “The Color Purple”
Tuesday
Last year’s “post of the year” for Better Living through Beowulf (in my opinion) was the one I wrote about the many unarmed black men killed by police and vigilantes, which in turn led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, I wrote, focuses on young black men claiming their identity and standing with pride.
This past year we’ve seen that it is not just black men who have been victimized. Sandra Bland, stopped for no reason at all, spent three days in jail, where she hanged herself. More recently, in an extraordinary-because-unusual case, Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma cop who had been raping the black women he stopped, was found guilty and may be sentenced to a life in prison.
Alice Walker long ago alerted us to the fact that black women could be just as much the target of white authority as black men. I’m thinking of Sofia’s arrest in the The Color Purple (1982). The scene reminds me of the moment in Flannery O’Connor’s “All that Rises Must Converge” where a white woman patronizes a little African American boy, only to be told angrily by his mother, “He don’t take nobody’s pennies!”
In Walker’s novel, the mayor’s wife Millie patronizes Sofia and her children with words that could have been uttered at a slave auction. Here’s the scene, told in the narrator Celie’s dialectical spelling:
Sofia and the prizefighter and all the children got in the prizefighter car and went to town. Clam out on the street looking like somebody. Just then the mayor and his wife come by.
All these children, say the mayor’s wife, digging in her pocketbook. Cute as little buttons though, she say. She stop, put her hand on one of the children head. Say, and such strong white teef.
Unlike the mother in the O’Connor story, Sofia and her boyfriend initially remain silent. Millie then changes her tone. Realizing suddenly that the prizefighter appears to have more money than she does, what with his car and the wristwatch that he has given Sofia, she decides to put Sofia in her place:
Sofia and the prizefighter don’t say nothing. Wait for her to pass. Mayor wait too, stand back and tap his foot, watch her with a little smile. Now Millie, he say. Always going on over colored. Miss Millie finger the children some more, finally look at Sofia and the prizefighter. She look at the prizefighter car. She eye Sofia wristwatch. She say to Sofia, All your children so clean, she say, would you like to work for me, be my maid?
We hear a lot these days about microagressions—from Claudia Rankine, for instance —but the aggression here goes beyond the micro level. It’s a deliberate power move to put Sofia in her place. Unfortunately for her well-being, Sofia snaps:
Sofia say, Hell no.
She say, What you say?
Sofia say, Hell no.
Mayor look at Sofia, push his wife out the way. Stick out his chest. Girl, what you say to Miss Millie?
Sofia say, I say, Hell no.
He slap her.
In the tragic case of both Bland and the raped women, there seemed to be no one to turn to. The responses were different. Until one woman finally reported Holtzclaw, his previous women remained silent. Bland, meanwhile, copped an attitude, refusing to put out her cigarette after she was stopped. Both those who pushed back and those who didn’t suffered consequences. Sofia, living in pre-World War II south, has even fewer options. Her boyfriend will be shot if he intervenes, and she feels the full wrath of the affronted white society:
When I see Sofia I don’t know why she still alive. They crack her skull, they crack her ribs. They tear her nose loose on one side. They blind her in one eye. She swole from head to foot. Her tongue the size of my arm, it stick out tween her teef like a piece of rubber. She can’t talk. And she just about the color of a eggplant.
Scare me so bad I near bout drop my grip. But I don’t. I put it on the floor of the cell, take out comb and brush, nightgown, witch hazel and alcohol and I start to work on her. The colored tendant bring me water to wash her with, and I start at her two little slits for eyes.
Fortunately, we have made some progress since the time in which The Color Purple is set and even since it was written. Mayors and police can no longer act with quite such disregard for individual rights.
But since innocent black women are still being stopped, sometimes raped, and frequently jailed, we can see just how necessary it is that we have dash cam videos and cell phone photographs and advocacy groups like Black Lives Matter and public prosecutors that hold people responsible.
Sofia continues to need our vigilance and our support.
News update: A grand jury has just declined to hold anyone responsible for Sandra Bland’s death.